1. Field of the Invention
Example embodiments of the present invention relate generally to a scaler and method thereof, and more particularly to a scaler and method of scaling a data signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
System-on-Chip (SOC) devices may be employed with higher bus bandwidth requirements. For example, in an SOC configured to perform a scaling-down process where a source image signal having a higher resolution is adjusted to an output image signal having a lower resolution, a plurality of buses may be employed for transferring the image signals.
A Picture in Picture (PIP) technique may allow viewers to watch more than one television (TV) program or channel at the same time on TV sets or other display devices. Typically, in a digital TV employing the PIP technique, a larger display picture is output accompanied by a smaller display image (e.g., overlapping the larger display image, on a side of the larger display image etc.), although it is understood that some PIP techniques perform a symmetrical split-screen type display with two equal-sized images. If the larger display picture is “swapped” with the smaller display picture, a scaling-down process may be performed on the larger display image so as to accommodate for the resultant lower resolution requirements. However, during the scaling-down process, signal loss (e.g., from connections and/or signal distortion due to insufficiency of available bus bandwidth) may occur, thereby degrading the viewer display.
If a higher-definition level image, for example 1080i or 720p, where ‘i’ may indicate an interlaced scan method and the ‘p’ may indicate a progressive scan method, is scaled-down by more than one half, a scaler may receive at least 2 lines of data from a memory device during a 1H time interval, where the ‘1H time’ interval may indicate a time period for processing a single horizontal line. During the scaling-down process, traffic of an entire system bus may be increased, and available bus bandwidth may be decreased, thereby reducing a stability of the system.